Iraqi Kurdistan parliament designates Aug. 3 as Yazidi genocide remembrance day
Displaced Yazidi Kurds, fleeing the violence from Islamic State in the Yazidi Shingal area in northwest, , August 10, 2014. Photo: Reuters
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament on Saturday passed a bill declaring August 3, as the annual Day of Remembrance of the Genocide against the Yazidis.
MPs attending a Saturday parliamentary session passed a resolution to “designate August 3 as Yazidi Genocide Remembrance Day” and called for reparations to survivors and the families of victims “under the provision of the Iraqi constitution,” according to the Kurdistan Parliament website.
The legislation, which recognizes the crimes against the Yazidi community as genocide and addresses issues such as reparations to be paid by the federal government, passed with all 87 members present voting in favor of the bill.
The solemn session was opened with a speech by Yazidi lawmaker Hedya Alu, followed by a moment of silence.
In August 2014, the Islamic State ISIS militants attacked the Sinjar district, which was home to hundreds of thousands of Yazidis, after Massoud Barzani’s KDP peshmerga militia forces withdrew from the area without a fight leaving behind the Yazidi civilians to IS killing and genocide.
An unpublished report by Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government KRG reportedly reveals that an 18,000 peshmerga forces of KRG were on the spot and retreat without mounting any defense when Islamic state IS attacked the Yazidi area of Sinjar.
Many Yazidis, critics, Kurdish politicians and observers blame Massoud Barzani, the commander in-chief of the Peshmerga, for the Yazidi massacre.
In 2017 Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament Speaker Yusuf Mohammed Sadiq said parliament had informed Massoud Barzani that KDP Peshmerga forces in Sinjar were weak, several weeks before the district fell to the Islamic State IS in August 2014.
Thousands of Yazidi women were raped and murdered, with many of the survivors sold into sexual slavery and taken away to other parts of Iraq, Syria, and even further afield. Men and boys were systematically murdered, forced to work for the group, or coerced into becoming child soldiers.
It is estimated that 3,000 Yazidis were killed over a period of several days and 6,800 others were abducted.
Although several thousand Yazidis have been rescued over the last four-and-a-half years, another 3,000 remain missing.
Hundreds of thousands more were displaced and most of those have not been able to return home.
After vacillating for several days, the United States started airdropping supplies to Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar on August 7 and then began a conducting airstrikes against ISIS on August 8.
Sinjar remains one of the least stable parts of Iraq, with many Yazidis reluctant to return because of their houses were destroyed. A lack of public services or jobs prevents many who would like to return from doing so.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad has repeatedly criticized both Erbil and Baghdad for not doing more to rebuild the area’s infrastructure and create the conditions that would enable displaced Yazidis to return home.
In a statement marking the fifth anniversary of the Yazidi genocide, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) President Masoud Barzani on Saturday urged Baghdad and Erbil to do more to rebuild Sinjar.
“Today we remember a catastrophic event that happened to the residents of Sinjar by the hand of [Islamic State],” he said, adding that the victims should receive compensation from the government.
“We ask of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Iraqi Government to cooperate in rebuilding Sinjar and to let the people there have authority [over local affairs],” said Barzani, who was President of the Kurdistan Region at the time of the massacre.
Barzani added that what happened in early August 2014 constituted genocide and that it is necessary for the international community to recognize it as such.
But most Yazidis lost faith in Barzani when his Peshmerga forces failed to protect them from Islamic State, while the Kurdistan Workers’ Party PKK and its Syrian sister party are widely seen as the Yazidis’ saviors.
The Yazidis are a Kurdish speaking religious group linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. The religious has roots that date back to ancient Mesopotamia, are considered heretics by the hard-line Islamic State group.
Some 600,000 Yazidis live in villages in Iraqi Kurdistan region and in Kurdish areas outside Kurdistan region in around Mosul in Nineveh province, with additional communities in Transcaucasia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Syria. Since the 1990s, the Yazidis have emigrated to Europe, especially to Germany. There are almost 1.5 million Yazidis worldwide.
(With files from nrttv.com | rudaw.net | Agencies)
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